“There is a prologue to the articulate—that is the silence,” said Derek Wolcott. “When that silence arrives, it can be the beginning of art.” As a prologue to her poems, Pat Fargnoli has listened deeply to the silence of winter, and the result is a collection of poems that capture the flame of the fox, the hunger of horses, and the solitude of snow—“ the flakes settling on your parka / like the dust from just-born stars.” What is articulated through these poems stems not from reticence, but from quiet observation and wisdom. Such great attention teaches us “the natural world comes to join you / if you go out to meet it,” and so we come to understand that “truth is found in silence.”

In Necessary Light, Pat Fargnoli proves that joy is not only possible, but that the highest joy is arrived at only after bearing the weight of experience through some terrifying valleys. Ms. Fargnoli's heartening, disturbing, mature first book is rich with two things poetry can never have enough of: energy and wonder. -- Brendan Galvin